The crop calendar
Cocoa runs on a hard annual cycle, and almost every number in this market is a date on it. Rain sets flowering. Flowering sets pods five to six months later. Pods set arrivals, arrivals set the balance, and the balance sets the price. Read the calendar and you can tell which forecasts are observed and which are still guesses.
Two crops a year
West African trees bear continuously but not evenly. The main crop opens in October and runs to February or March; it is roughly three-quarters of the year's output and the crop the market watches. The mid-crop (Côte d'Ivoire) or light crop (Ghana) runs from April or May to August or September. Its beans are smaller and lower in fat, and the Conseil du Café-Cacao sets a separate, lower price for them.
The season is named for the year the main crop opens: 2026/27 begins on 1 October 2026.
From rain to bag
| When | What happens | What it means for the crop |
|---|---|---|
| March–June | First rains; flowering and pod set | Rain here decides the size of the main crop six months later |
| June–September | Pods filling; cherelle wilt | Too little rain shrinks pods; too much spreads black pod |
| July–September | Pod counts; agencies revise forecasts | The first observed evidence of the coming main crop |
| October | Season opens; farmgate price announced | Arrivals begin, first at the ports nearest the forest belt |
| October–December | Peak harvest and fermentation | Arrivals run at their highest weekly rate |
| December–February | Harmattan wind; drying is fast, flowering suppressed | Dry, dusty conditions; a long harmattan hurts the mid-crop |
| February–March | Main crop tails off; totals become known | Arrivals data now describe a crop that has mostly happened |
| April–September | Mid-crop | Smaller beans; the price is set separately |
Why the lag matters
A flower that opens in April becomes a bean in a bag in October. Everything between — pod set, wilt, disease, the size of the beans — is observable on the tree but published nowhere. Forecasts made before September are extrapolations from rain and history; forecasts made after are counts. That is why the market treats a pod-count revision in August very differently from a rainfall model in May, and why a source that revises itself heavily between the two is telling you how uncertain the earlier number was.
Latin America and Asia
Ecuador harvests year-round with a peak from March to June, which is one reason its beans fill gaps when West Africa is between crops. Brazil's Bahia main crop runs from October to March, its temporão from May to September. Indonesia's Sulawesi peak is April to August. The Northern-hemisphere seasonal pattern that dominates price is West African; the counter-seasonal origins soften it.